How SQL Search saves you time

Since 1999, Red Gate Software has produced ingeniously simple and effective tools for over 500,000 technology professionals worldwide. From their HQ in Cambridge UK, they create a number of great tools for MS SQL Server, .NET, and Oracle. The philosophy of Red Gate is to design highly usable, reliable tools that solve the problems of DBAs and developers.

Every year Red Gate selects a number of active and influential community members (such as popular blog writers and community site owners) as well as SQL and .NET MVPs who are experts in their respective fields, to be part of the Friends of Red Gate (FORG) program. I’m proud to announce that I’m part of the 2014 FORG selection. This post is a part of a series of post, in which I try to explain and show you why the tools of Red Gate are so loved by the community.

Red Gate? No thank you!
One of the biggest prejudices of the tools from Red Gate is: you have to sell one of your kidneys, in order to afford one of their tools. I agree with you, some of the tools Red Gate sells are pretty expensive. Especially when you need to buy them yourself. But what if I tell you they pay for themselves in the long run? You don’t believe me? Okay, let’s start of with a free tool to convince you.

How SQL Search can save your bacon
As a DBA and SQL Server developer, one of your biggest challenges is to memorize your whole environment, and learn every line of T-SQL there is to find from the top of your head. I’m sorry? Oh, you don’t do that? Well, that doesn’t really come as a surprise. And if you thought: “Hey! I’m doing that too!”, stop wasting your time! No DBA, wherever you will look in the world, will EVER remember all of the T-SQL script, stored procedures, views, etc, that can be found in his or her environment. But where do they get their information from? What would you say if I told you you could search though all objects in a specific database, or on a specific instance?

So how do you do that? You’re planning on making your own script to search through the system view sys.columns for column names, and sys.procedures for Stored Procedure text? There is an easy way out, you know!

Installing and testing
In order to create a test case that you can repeat on your own SQL Server, I’m using the AdventureWorks2012 database. That’s a free example database that you can download from CodePlex. I’ve chosen to download the backup file, that I restored on my local SQL Server.

The installation of SQL Search can be found on the Red Gate SQL site. When you installed SQL Search, a button will be added to the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS):

So, what do you actually get? If you click the button in SSMS, you’ll see a new window, that’ll act as a result pane. The top of the new screen looks like this:

This screen contains all possible options you will need to find objects either on your server, or in a specific database. You see a textbox on the left, where you fill in your search term. The next few options can be used as a filter. You can search on an exact match (checkbox), search on a specific object only (dropdown list), and on a specific database (dropdown list). The last dropdown list is the instance you want to search on. This list is populated with the open instance connections from your object explorer.

Test case
So how does this work in practice? One of your colleagues comes up to you, and asks you what objects in your database are related to department data. You could search for documentation in order to answer that question, or you could let SQL Search give you the answer. So, let’s search the AdventureWorks2012 for objects that are related to, or contain department data. The result will look like this:

As you will see there are 18 objects that are related to your search term (the count of object is visible at the bottom of the search results on the right). Some objects are shown multiple times, because there are multiple matches on that object. For example the “vEmployeeDepartment” view. The name of the view contains our search term, one of the columns is called department, and the text of the view (create script) contains your search string.

But how does this work with real life situations? How many times do you get the question from your colleagues how many objects are related to a specific table or column? As a DBA you probably get this question more than you would like. Your developers want to rebuild an application, or add a new feature to it, but they’re not sure if the database change they’ll make will break another applications or processes.

It’s also possible for you to use the tool to your own advantage. For example, when you want to know which object can update a specific employee record. You just search for both terms, and you’ll see that there are 3 stored procedures that update employee information:

Please hold on, while I search for the object…
…is a sentence you never have to use again when working with SQL Search. Whenever you found the object you were looking for, you can just double click on it, or use the button between the result pane, and the script pane:

This will look up the object in the object explorer. So you never have to look for an object after you found it. Just let SQL Search do all the hard work.

Red Gate? They’re AWESOME!!!
Hopefully you changed your mind about Red Gate tools, after reading this article. This is one of the tools I personally use on a daily basis. Even though there is documentation within your company, you still need to find it. It’s printed and laying around somewhere, or on an intranet or SharePoint. You know where you can find it, except when you REALLY need it!

SQL Search is also a tool you (in my opinion) really need when you’re new to a company. You’ll see a lot of different databases, with different purposes, and maybe even different DBA’s responsible for that specific database. Using SQL Search gives you a great advantage when you need to have a chat with the DBA. You’ll step into their office with a little more knowledge of the database, without reading endless documents, cryptic ERD’s and folders full of unnecessary documentation.

Feedback
When you start using the tool, don’t forget to thank the people from Red Gate. They LOVE to hear your feedback, either in a tweet, the Red Gate Forums, or by contacting support. You could also send me a mail or tweet, or leave a comment at the bottom of this post. I would love to answer your questions (as far as I can), or pass them on to Red Gate.

If you want to read more about SQL Search, don’t forget to check out these blog posts: